Critics of Dungeons And Dragons manage to get “BoycottDNDMovie” trending online
The controversy surrounding the Dungeons And Dragonstabletop license is threatening to break containment
Aux News Hasbro
For a few months now, there’s been a serious controversy brewing in the world of Dungeons & Dragons, as fans began to hear rumblings from D&D owner Wizards Of The Coast (itself owned by Hasbro) about upcoming changes to the games’ Open Game License, an expansive document that allows third-party publishers to use elements from the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks—classes, spells, and monsters, for instance, but also base gameplay rules, like rolling a 20-sided die to resolve attacks or skill checks—for their own content.
(If you want more info on the OGL, we’ll direct you to our colleagues over at io9, who’ve been covering this topic, and the growing firestorm around it, extensively over the last few weeks. The upshot of the initial license, though, was the arrival of a huge number of new tabletop systems and campaigns that used D&D as a jumping off point—increasing the prestige, and profit, of the home system, while also encouraging further creativity. Perceived threats to those systems, like the hyper-popular Pathfinder, are a big part of the anger at play here.)
Rumors (spurred on by leaked documents) that the OGL might be revoked, or significantly altered, in the near future have already produced multiple apologies from WoTC, as well as real financial consequences, with reports that users have canceled their subscriptions to the company’s online D&D Beyond service in response to the reports. And then, today, angry users managed to get #BoycottDNDMovie at least briefly trending on Twitter.
Said D&D movie is, of course, Honor Among Thieves, the Chris Pine-starring upcoming heist movie that Hasbro et. al are presumably hoping to use to wash the taste of the last live-action Dungeons & Dragons movie out of everybody’s mouth. (And build-up a brand that’s reportedly become a very large portion of the toy company’s profits.) Critics of the company are apparently targeting the film because they’re pretty sure doing so is the best way to make Hasbro’s leadership look inept in front of investors, identifying it as a weak point in the company’s platemail.
As with any such trending, it’s not clear how much sincere energy there is behind a boycott movement for the film, currently aimed at a March 31 release. But Wizards Of The Coast did release multiple statements today, including a long apology from Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink, and a Twitter thread hoping to debunk rumors that the company has been ignoring player feedback for years. So somebody is clearly paying attention, even if it’s not clear what the protest movement will eventually amount to. (Honestly, we’re just waiting to see Pine and his co-stars have to field questions about all this during the movie’s junket; love a celebrity interview with explanatory footnotes.)
78 Comments
As both a fan and professional in the world of tabletop gaming, the OGL kerfuffle is the third thing that’s happened this year that makes me want to throw up my hands and turn my back on this whole fucking industry.
I suppose I’m not up to date on the other 2 major events?
One is personal and not going to make headline. The other is Gen Con’s well intentioned but needlessly restrictive new event content policy that they refuse to answer any clarifying questions about.
Hasbro et. al are presumably hoping to use to wash the taste of the last out of everybody’s mouth.
That movie was 23 years ago. Time has done the work for Hasbro.
The problem is the track record since of their IP being adapted, unless you like Michael Bay’s Transformers movies.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was way better than a show designed to sell plastic horses needed to be.
I meant movies.
The movie was pretty good, too.
I seek not the enmity of bronies.
I don’t even know if this is a Brony thing, or just the unfortunate fact that almost every Hasbro movie is remarkably terrible* except for the two recent My Little Pony movies, which are both great (they’re also the only ones made by the creative team of the original show they’re based on, which probably has a lot to do with it.)
* Obviously Clue is the best movie based on a Hasbro property, not to mention the best toy or game-based movie of all time, but Hasbro did not own the Clue franchise until years after that film was made, so it doesn’t count.
Speaking of ‘Clue’, a D&D movie that was released with multiple different endings would be a great idea. After all, every campaign has the possibility of different endings based on the choices the players make.
The movie is more of a test run; Hasbro/WotC are much more invested in video games as the future of their IP monetization (the newish president/CEO of WotC came from Xbox management and has stated her focus on video games and virtual tabletop).
The most recent prior Dungeons & Dragons movie was D&D: Book of Vile Darkness, which came out in 2012. It wasn’t good enough to get much in the way of theatrical time. Neither was its predecessor (D&D: Wrath of the Dragon God) in 2005. One was released on the Sci Fi channel, and the other was direct-to-DVD.
The sentence I’m quoting links to the 2000 movie.
And it seems the movies you’re citing support my point.
I’m still pretty confused by how the relicensing would even affect existing derivative works. They were all created with the existing version of the OGL, and in my very limited understanding of licensing, it’s a no-takesies-backsies sort of situation.New works would be licensed with the new version, and only those would be impacted by the new clauses. WotC/Hasbro would guarantee that the only products they sell after the update feature the old license.Something similar happened with AD&D 2nd Ed., where a bunch of people were like: Nah, 1st Ed. for us — and that lasted at least half a decade.If the new version of your product contains some sort of licensing poison pill (or just plain sucks), customers will stick to the old product.
From the io9 article, it sounds like the new licensing agreement includes some “take backsies” language about completely voiding the old licensing agreement. That may not be legal, but the test would be some tabletop gaming company going to court against Hasbro. It also creates a murky area for games that are currently under development, if they were relying on the old license and now have to conform to the new one. For small companies (which tabletop gaming makers are), a lawsuit or disruption in development can be pretty devastating. My limited experience is that it’s easy to say “but they can’t do that” when there’s nothing on the line. When there’s an actual threat of litigation, it’s a different kettle of fish.
Challenging the legality of retroactive licensing would be an undue burden on smaller companies, you’re right. At least the EFF is following the case. They may be able to collect enough funds from the injured parties to mount a legal challenge, should that become necessary.
Looking at some more articles, the DnD folks also tried to use the new licensing agreement to leverage some content makers into signing special licenses. I bring this up because whatever the legality of modifying an open license, they were basically trying to get some third party companies under contract, which gives DnD a lot more legal standing. Shady stuff.
That’s good info, and very shady, yes. Sounds like the lawyers may have been given the directive to squeeze as much profit as possible out of anything DnD related. Maybe toy sales are down?Anyway, I can’t see this ending well for anyone, and it sounds like it was ultimately a self-defeating move on Hasbro/WotC’s part. It would be hilarious if they thought they’d be able to sneak those changes past their customers. If anyone reads the fine print, it’s tabletop RPG types.
“What do you mean it’s a whole market of adults who love math and arcane rules?”- Hasbro
Wizards Of The Coast (itself owned by Hasbro) about upcoming changes to the games’ Open Game License, an expansive document that allows third-party publishers to use elements from the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks—classes, spells, and monsters, for instance, but also base gameplay rules, like rolling a 20-sided die to resolve attacks or skill checks—for their own content.
That’s not the issue. WotC could always have used third party content under the old license and only did so once.The issue is that none of the companies that have been publishing stuff that works with D&D for two decades — along with the publishers of completely different games that also use the license instead of going through the hassle of creating their own — cannot publish any new content once the new ones goes into effect. (This is likely illegal, but it’s the argument Hasbro is making.)The crazy thing is how unnecessary this is. Even the biggest of third party companies aren’t making content that Wizards appears to have any interest in publishing. (With their larger market share, they could easily outsell anyone who was in the same space as they are.) This is suits who don’t understand the economics of the game industry, including that people buying third party content are also buy Wizards of the Coast books to run it with. The rising tide has been lifting everyone’s boats for almost two decades now.
And yeah, huge self-own by Hasbro to pull this right as the movie is coming out, meaning it’ll be written about in countless mainstream publications as part of the movie coverage. It’s hard to imagine that they’re going to create the number of new D&D players they hoped to through the movie.
I have a bad feeling this has less to do with what’s out there now than with Hasbro not being able to show they vigorously defended their copyrights and trademarks in court. It’s the reason Warners sues street corner vendors who sell non-licensed Batman t-shirts, or why after years of letting STAR TREK fans make not-for-profit fan films Paramount issued a set of guidelines so odious even James Cawley, whose STAR TREK: PHASE II fan continuation the TREK producers really liked, felt he had no choice but to shut down his operation. (Paramount threw him a bone by licensing him the right to use the sets he’d built as a USS ENTERPRISE tour for fans.)
This movie looks relatively decent and done by people who have some understanding of the game and its meta, but honestly, Stranger Things did more to attract new D&D players than this movie ever will.You don’t get people to play D&D by showing what their characters would see, you get them to play D&D by making sitting around a table playing make-believe with dice and poorly-painted miniatures for 5 hours look fun….Jesus Christ when I hear myself explain it I wonder why I get excited to do this every week.
LOL that’s kind of why I never played. Like I LIKE the idea of D&D in theory, but actually playing it IRL seems like a slog. Granted I am not the type that would want to play a single tabletop game for days or weeks. Aside from the problem of needing a dedicated space, that you can’t do anything else with while the game is running, D&D also requires a certain amount of actual dedication and investment in your character, like if you don’t give a shit about them, the fun isn’t there. Also you NEED a good DM.
Need a good DM: yes. Need a dedicated space? I’ve played more D&D over the past, uh, 33 months (nothing specific about that timeframe) than I have in the entirety of my life, which is saying A LOT, and none of that time has been spent IRL. Everything’s online now. The only dedicated space you need is a whatever your computer rests on.
I get not wanting to play games for days or weeks – I’m the opposite, I love long-running games, I was in one that met infrequently for 15 years. One of the games I’ve run recently met more or less weekly for about 4-5 hours a session and lasted 56 sessions over the course of 65 weeks. But the current paradigm of the game is such that you can absolutely do one-shot games that take 4 hours. I’ve been in 2-hour one-shots with random people at conventions, but they seem to not involve much.
Fair enough, and I always forget about the online thing. And your right there are short one shots as well. I don’t know like the closest I have got to D&D, table top style, would be something like Gloomhaven. We have only played like 2 times maybe 3 since I bought it AGES ago, and it’s primarily because set up and teardown takes forever, and I even bought a sorting thing for it for storing the various components. Like 45 minutes to set up and tear down is awful. If we had a spot we could leave it more or less set up all the time maybe we would have played more. Also I think some of the rules need/should be changed as one of the mechanic’s essentially limits the max number of turns you can play, which make getting through a single dungeon tough, like almost impossible to actually do.
Oh damn yeah, I was completely scared away by the size of the Gloomhaven box. That looks like a game that requires as much time to setup as it does to play. I have played a considerable amount of boardgames and even that seemed daunting.
It almost does lol. That’s primarily from trying to go through the literal hundreds of various object to populate a certain map for a dungeon. Playing isn’t awful, though the rules are a little umm iffy. Specifically the one dealing with player cards which control your movement and attacks. Each character type gets x cards at the start, you do not get more, though as you level up your character though multiple play throughs you can. Because of the way they are used, and with the thing with a long or short rest, you lose for that game a card every so often, no cards to draw your out. So depending on how many you get at the jump, you get a fixed say 20 turns, for the entire game, which IMO and we may have been doing it wrong, others have said we were, which makes it almost imposible to fully check out a dungeon or kill the enemies for loot.
Virtual gaming is also a great boon for board gaming, it does all the setup/breakdown for you.Seconding one-shots (there are tons of really fun, free games that are literally a single page of rulesetting, and you can just roll from there) and adding there are a bunch of games that are straight up GMless, and many more that reduce the pressure on a GM to carry a game by focusing on collaborative storytelling. A great example for new players is The Quiet Year; here’s a fun virtual tabletop play session of it.
A lot of DND groups use Theatre of the mind, no physical maps or figures (maybe a paper map). Set up for that is quick imho
A lot of DND groups use Theatre of the mind, no physical maps or figures (maybe a paper map). Set up for that is quick imho
As Brian Posehn’s podcast informs us, it’s nerd poker. You sit around a table once a week, drink beer, and eat take-out, while playing a game as attentively as you like. You can totally zone out to some degree.
A good DM and good players too. Everyone involved has to be a fairly decent actor for the whole thing to work. When you get players who don’t want to immerse themselves in their character and take the world they are supposedly in seriously but just treat it like a game and find “loopholes” in the rules then it ruins it for everyone.
That’s kind of how I have always viewed it, outside looking in of course lol. IMO to me it’s like playing poker, no limit or otherwise, with like fake money, if your not invested IN the game there kind of isn’t a point in playing in the first place. And that’s why D&D isn’t really for me to be honest. I don’t really get invested in characters, even in something like movies or games. To make D&D fun the RP part of the title is VERY important to the game as a whole. I am glad people enjoy it, and i like the idea, but it’s just one of those things that’s not really for me.
I heard WotC have been dumping piles of gold pieces into building AI DMs to supply that need.
Interesting.
I mean… it’s the BEST way to make 4 hours feel like it went by in 20 or 30 minutes.
Well to be fair, they didn’t pull the rights. I believe they were working on the idea and the doc leaked. So it was half a self own on the timing and mostly just an idea they shouldn’t have even discussed because it caused such an uproar.
Pretty typical for the loud section of D&D fans to find a new controversy to get frothy about. Happens every few months. While there was one fairly egregious clause in the new OGL, most of it was super banal. But these guys look for any reason to hate WOTC/Hasbro, and thus was created this mountain out of a molehill.People are acting like this is some huge power and money grab by Hasbro and WOTC, even though, as far as D&D goes, they have never exhibited such tendencies. Especially over the last 9 years with 5th edition.
This is different. This is more than two decades in the making. If you think that Hasbro doesn’t have moneygrabbing tendencies, you haven’t been paying attention to some of the stuff they’ve been doing with their Transformers IP. Likewise, the reason they haven’t been doing this stuff with D&D for the past couple of decades is because they only JUST woke up to the fact that WotC is literally making about half of the company’s total income every year, and that D&D is effectively a Core Brand for them.
Nah. Ignore the fans – look at how the companies have reacted. Fire sales on existing OGL product, cancellation of all future OGL projects, banding together to create their own competing open game license. We’re not talking about here and there, we’re not talking about the one loud fan creator on twitter. Go to your local game shop and 75% of the non-D&D books on the shelf just declared open war on Wizards of the Coast.It’s not a tempest in a social media teacup.
Yeah too many people want the whole org to go back to being TSR, run out of a basement in Lake Geneva, etc
I’m willing to bet that the movie is the reason behind this whole mess. Someone at Hasbro thought “oh shit, a lot of people are going to get into D&D because of the movie. WE NEED TO EXPLOIT THEM!” and came up with this terrible new OGL which has now tanked the franchise’s reputation, and ironically might tank the movie’s box office along with it.The sad part is, none of this reflects on the quality of the movie, since the people who made it had nothing to do with this OGL bullshit. It might be awful, it might be terrific. But either way its fate might rest on factors completely out of the filmakers’ control.
I imagine that any lessons to be learned from the 1980s idiot-fest that was the management of T$R have been long lost on the current crop of C-level execs at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast?
Hasbro has been steadily ramping up the development of D&D as a brand for some years now, as both D&D and Magic (and therefore Wizards of the Coast) have become Hasbro’s biggest cash cow. They’ve pivoted a lot of attention to monetizing the nerdspace, and both the movie and these OGL shenanigans are part of the same initiative.
“I’m willing to bet that the movie is the reason behind this whole mess. Someone at Hasbro thought “oh shit, a lot of people are going to get into D&D because of the movie. WE NEED TO EXPLOIT THEM!””
Or, OR, maybe it’s because D&D is doing a complete overhaul of the IP, with major, major changes coming to the status quo for the first time in decades.
Or, you know, it’s because of a movie.
As if the presence of Chris Pine isn’t itself enough to tank a movie.
He’s not the worst Chris by a long shot. I’ll be going with the rest of my family.
Jeez, William sure loves his parentheses. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire paragraph put in parentheses before.
As we speak, Paramount Studios teamsters are shoving a WOTC executive into the trunk of a car.
Can someone explain this to me in dumb-dumb terms? I’m legitimately interested but I cannot follow these articles. I need like, a firm and easy example of something to illustrate what would incite backlash.
Basically Wizards of the Coast had an “open gaming license” in place which allowed other publishers to make supplements, adventures, and even entirely new games that used various rules and concepts from D&D without the publisher needing to pay for the privilege. Now they want to change the license and charge for such things, potentially destroying the third-party D&D industry.
It should also be noted that in the new OGL 1.1 WoTC could backdoor 3erd party content and take it for there own. After the outcry against OGL 1.1 WoTC backtracked on that part of the OGL 1.1.
Other tabletop games use the DnD system/rules because they’re well established and familiar to gamers. That used to be free, but the folks who make DnD have introduced a royalty scheme and new registration/admin rules. Depending how they’re implemented, those things could bite into the profit margins of a small gaming company. Really though, the new rules make it easier for Hasbro to sue other tabletop gaming companies that use DnD content, which would be devastating for a small company. And based on that io9 article, they’re being deliberately vague about whether older games made under the previous open license are now bound by the new license. That may not be enforceable, but again the test is getting sued by Hasbro.
This description seems a bit misleading- yes, there’s companies that are using older editions of DnD, adding and subtracting, and then publishing them for profit, but the vast majority of the effect of the new OGL will be on third-party publishers that are making content for people to put in their home games, not full games based on DnD. (And honestly, even those companies that are publishing those DnD-based games are going to be less affected by this agreement, as game mechanics cannot be copyrighted.)
WotC tricked everyone into giving up more rights than fair use would have otherwise let them give up, now they’re trying to screw people even more. Here’s a good article on the original OGL and how it was trash from the get go:https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a-copyright-exception
The difficulty with fair use is that the fair user incurs legal fees and injunctions on distribution of their work, regardless of the ultimate outcome. Copyright law is aways skewed toward copyright holders.
Nerds gonna nerd, bruv.
Well, first we have to answer the question “what is a role-playing game?”, and to do that we have to ask “What is story-telling?” Fortunately, that’s quite simple. We start around a fireplace in ancient Babylonia…
Bottom line, WoTC wants to deauthorize OGL 1.0a in order to regain full control of the DND ip, everything else is either a smokescreen or side-goal. They basically want to monetize DND like video games in order to massively increase their profits and the only way to do that is to get rid of OGL 1.0a. The corporations succeeded in making MTX a standard industry practice in video games, we cant let them do the same thing with TTrpgs. The good news is that no matter what happens, even if WOTC wins, is that we can move on to other systems or make up our own. WoTC cant control the one thing we need to play TTrpgs, our minds and social interactions.
I imagine this boycott will have as strong an effect on the D&D movie’s bottom line as the boycott on JKR has had on the new Hogwarts game.
Interestingly, a boycott of their D&DBeyond product absolutely worked and lead them to furiously backpedaling this. They lost a huge amount of recurring revenue in a remarkably short span of time.
Boycotts work if people don’t listen to the assholes who say “boycotts don’t work.”
I think that depends on your definition of “backpedaling.” Like, they didn’t actually modify the license – they’re just making some statements in the press that, crucially, don’t change the new restrictions or the new rights the company reserves. Personally, I would say that they’re doing what companies do: mollifying a segment of their fanbase without actually changing anything.
Yeah, it’s not so much “backpedaling” as it is “LOL SORRY THE LEAKED DOCUMENT WASN’T FINAL.” Honestly I think it was purposefully leaked in order to create a firestorm so they could solidify territory they have no right to claim and seem reasonable when they backed away from the crazier shit.
You know, after reading more I take back my snark – the company may still enact its shitty licensing agreement, but people are really hitting them where it hurts. It’s impressive.
Hey, what’s D&D without snark?
But yeah it is impressive. Honestly was not expecting to see such a targeted and effective campaign. There may have been a good confluence of events there, though, because people were not exactly happy with Wizards buying DNDBeyond, so there was probably a good number of users already primed to jump ship upon any further nonsense.For my part, I a) never paid for it (I’m all in on Roll20) and b) was kind of shocked when Wizards bought something I assumed was theirs from the get-go.
The problem with boycotting a movie is that general movie goers who’ve heard various things about DnD over the years will still see the movie regardless. It’s no longer the fandom vs WOTC.
Like the time I rallied people not to buy from a company that was making sexist, male-only baby beds.Yes, the boy cot boycott worked splendidly.
If the DnD movie does “Fantastic Beasts 3″ business, folks on twitter will say that the boycott worked. If DnD does “Hogwarts game” business, folk on twitter will shrug and say, “Better luck next time.”
allows third-party publishers to use elements from the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks… but also base gameplay rules, like rolling a 20-sided die to resolve attacks or skill checksYeah it doesn’t “allow” that any more than it “allows” third-party publishers to make a Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes Team-Up RPG. This is like saying Bicycle has control of what games can and cannot use a 52-card deck.
Yeah “Legal Eagle”, a Youtuber who is an actual lawyer and likes to comment on pop culture stuff from a legal angle brings up that maybe the OGL wasn’t really enforceable in the first place — you can copyright the actual text of rules, and you can trademark the name, but you can’t protect the ideas if you say them in your own words — as he says, this was tested in a 19th century case involving a new style of bookkeeping, and more recently, Words with Friends basically cloned Scrabble without legal problems.
His channel is soooo good.
As someone who plays the game and as just a person who lives in the world and someone who just doesn’t like corporations and how people are treated by them, it’s really nice to see motivated people stick it to these corporate fucks. They’re trying to wring money out of a robust community without knowing anything about it. But the boycott is BECAUSE D&D is a big portion of their profits, and Hasbro has been selling the movie to shareholders as a huge way that they will hike their profits . This is both strategic for the D&D community and an acute weakness for Hasbro.This is not going to go away quickly, and the D&D community is uniquely suited to mess with corporations; they’re fiercely loyal to the game and to the communal sense of content creators, are incredibly focused on rules and so are happy to get into the details of the legal docs, are problem solvers by nature, and are by definition suited to seeing themselves as the little guys fighting big bads. They’re also pretty strategic, monied, widely connected online, and absolutely willing to dedicate enormous amounts of their time to this. Hasbro has not yet understood the depth of the problem they’ve incurred; it’s #releasethesnydercut level of obsession, with people who are not mouthbreathers.
The controversy surrounding the Dungeons And Dragonstabletop license is threatening to break containmentThere needs to be a space between Dragons and tabletop.
Well I guess have at it, nerds.
You like typing on that nerdy internet, do you?
It just kills me that this is what Chris Pine is up to nowadays.
Even the most recent new OGL draft (version 1.2) is talking about withdrawing authorization from past versions of the license (effectively forcing new publication to operate under the terms of 1.2 or cease publication). There are pretty serious questions as to whether or not WotC has the authority to do that, and both Ryan Dancey (architect of the OGL, and former executive at WotC over the D&D brand) and the lawyer that AUTHORED 1.0a have gone on record as saying that there are no provisions for revoking a prior authorized version of the license ON PURPOSE. As long as WotC believes that they can take away 1.0a, people are going to continue to be up in arms because THAT action is the core betrayal of the community’s trust. They NEED to be disabused of that notion IN COURT if necessary. Until that point, anything that drives home to them that they are slitting their own (metaphorical financial ) throats by pissing off their customer base is for the best.
Boycotting the movie will communicate that the film wasn’t wanted, but will have no real bearing on the actual table top game. You have to be more precise rather than more broad. If you want to send the message you are not happy with the OGL, then stop buying DnD tabletop stuff (rule books, campaigns, miniatures, etc.). This includes purchasing the digital counterparts (particularly on DnDBeyond, as that site is now owned by WotC).
The movie was made by Paramount, not WotC. It’s the same as Fortnite having a Marvel collaboration. Marvel did not make Fortnite, Epic did. If you don’t like Marvel (or I guess Disney), boycotting Fortnite only hurts Epic. A similar thing happened to Orson Scott Card and the Ender’s Game movie. People boycotted that because Card doesn’t support the LGBT+ community and uses money he earns to fund anti-LGBT+ organizations. However, Lionsgate chose to not provide Card with royalties and completely removed him from the production. Sure, someone might decide to go buy a book, but in the grand scheme of things the “boycott” only succeeded in killing any hope for more Enderverse movies, and Card is still publishing successful novels todate.
In any case, I view boycotting the movie as a poor knee-jerk reaction that won’t have the results people think it will have. You are going to say no to the film and all of the people who worked to make the movie who are not employed at WotC, while in the same breath standing up for the people who work hard to make tabletop campaigns and livestream content who are not employed at WotC. Seems kind of double edged to me and doesn’t go after the source: the pencil pushers who work at WotC itself.